Former Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, became the latest lawmaker involved in the drafting of President Obama’s health care law to undermine the case against the legislation currently being considered by the Supreme Court. In an interview with the New York Times, Snowe, who left office in 2013, said that the language at the heart of the suit was perhaps the product of “inadvertent language” and “never part of our conversations at any point.”

The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, King vs. Burwell, say a phrase in the law -- “established by the state” -- means that only those participating in exchanges set up by the states have have access to federal tax subsidies to offset their premiums. Currently, residents in the 34 states that did not chose to set up their own exchanges have access to the subsidies through a federal exchange marketplace, which plaintiffs say contradicts the four words in question.

All four of the GOP governors with 2016 ambitions are facing budget shortfalls back home that their critics would argue are disasters of their own doing. It puts them in a politically difficult position: consider tax increases that put their fiscal conservative credentials on the line, or move forward with ugly cuts that risk high-profile showdowns with their legislative counterparts.

Complicating matters, three of the four -- Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich -- have signed the anti-tax pledge heralded by conservative activist Grover Norquist, while New Jersey’s Chris Christie has verbally promised to not raise taxes. That limits their options to address revenues that have fallen short of expectations.

“Post-Tea Party there are new requirements for being a successful candidate if you’re a Republican,” Norquist told TPM. “And that includes reining spending more than some are willing to do.”

With an executive order issued Tuesday evening, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal made clear he intended to enforce his own version of a religious freedom proposal that hours earlier the state House had killed in committee. However, Jindal's intentions aside, legal experts tell TPM the executive order will have little practical effect.

"As far as real world effects in Louisiana? Probably not much," Keith Werhan, a professor of law at Tulane University said. But it's important to recognize, Werhan said, that this amounts to a state symbolically "legitimizing discriminatory treatment against same-sex couples."

Jeb Bush's foundering response to the question of whether he would have invaded Iraq sparked a wave of responses from the rest of the 2016 GOP field that amounted to a broad retrenchment on the issue.

But the politics were unmistakeable. The well-funded Bush was bleeding in the water, and his rivals were happy to be the hungry sharks. Bush has now conceded it was a "bumpy" few days. But he wasn't alone in struggling with the question.

Let a fellow student conduct an "invasive" transvaginal ultrasound on you while your teacher calls you "sexy" and suggests you should be an "escort girl," or be "blacklisted" from working at local hospitals. That is the choice sonography students at Valencia College, a community college in central Florida, allegedly faced, according to a lawsuit filed last week by two former students.

While asking students to participate voluntarily in certain procedures is not uncommon in education programs, medical professionals told TPM, forcing them to do so goes against established standards of the medical education field.

The lawsuit alleges Valencia College officials unconstitutionally forced students in its medical sonography program to submit to the “extremely invasive and often painful" transvaginal ultrasound procedure. The plaintiffs were threatened with academic and professional punishment when they brought up their concerns, including the presence of a male student who would be performing the procedure on them, the suit says.

As Jeb Bush was tying himself into a pretzel over the Iraq War last week, a curious silence emanated from the usual cadre of Iraq War architects, boosters, and hangers-on.

The willingness of Bush's Republican primary rivals to criticize him for initially saying he supported the war — even knowing what is known now — was itself remarkable and suggests a watershed moment in the GOP's reckoning with disaster of the Iraq War. But also notable was the dog that didn't bark.

TPM reached out to a number of key figures in the run-up to the Iraq War, most of whom would not comment. We did find some Iraq War supporters who would talk, but rather than affirmatively defending the decision to go to war, they dismissed the line of questioning Jeb Bush faced as "unfair" or attributed the Iraq War failures to big government "throwing money" at the problem.

Then there was James Woolsey, the former CIA director and Iraq War advocate. He said what would have changed his support for the invasion was not 20/20 vision about WMDs or the difficulty of the occupation, but seeing how Barack Obama has handled the war.

"'I should have said in '03, ‘No, I don't want us to go to war under Barack Obama," Woolsey said.

The upshot is that the right-wing sound machine which for more than a decade came loudly to the defense of the war and savaged its critics was for the first time almost subdued in its response.

While the country waits for a Supreme Court decision next month on gay marriage, the Republican presidential field is still grappling with gay adoption -- which is much more widely accepted by the American public than gay marriage is. None of the major GOP presidential contenders has voiced support for allowing gay adoption, and some remain opposed, even as the prevalence of gay adoption and broadening support for it has made the practice commonplace.

When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said he wouldn't have authorized invading Iraq based on what we know today he went out of his way to seek the cover of the man who actually did launch the invasion of Iraq, former President George W. Bush.

Wednesday marked the second time in two years the House of Representatives passed a 20-week abortion ban. But this time, as opposed to the bill's passage in 2013, Republicans have the benefit of a GOP-controlled Senate and a majority leader who has already promised to bring it up for a vote once it's introduced in the upper chamber.

That doesn’t mean the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is likely to overcome a filibuster by Democrats, a reality the measure’s champions have already acknowledged.

“I can’t promise you we are going to get 60 votes this year,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is expected to introduce a Senate version soon, told anti-abortion activists at the Susan B. Anthony List Gala last month.